Kits vs ready-made (was RE: Rebirth of IMSAI) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

31 Mar 1999

Unfortunately, in today's climate ("NOTHING's MY fault!") people buy a
kit
with the assumption that the seller will provide whatever expertise is
required to assemble it correctly.  That was not the case 20 years back.
This kind of handholding is frustrating and costly.

A degree in engineering isn't sufficient qualification, either.  Some of the
crappiest work I ever saw while in the aerospace industry, was by fairly
senior engineers.  The excuse was that "it's not a deliverable,"  but often
the shoddy technique (air-wires, etc) made for problems which couldn't
readily be explained, but which didn't occur when a competent technician
built the same circuit.

Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Duell &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt;
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
&lt;classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu&gt;
Date: Wednesday, March 31, 1999 2:03 PM
Subject: Re: Kits vs ready-made (was RE: Rebirth of IMSAI)

...
 > I claim the other way around.  Most kit suppliers
have to spend _more_ on
> technical support because they have to help people who try kits too hard for
...
   them and
expect the supplier to sort out their mistakes. 
On the other hand, I don't suppose total newbies (you know, the sort of
person who has problems inserting Disk 3 because the drive is already
full with disks 1 _and_ 2) would even attempt a kit...

-tony